As-If Science Jam Schmiede26 · 16–26 Sept 2026 · Hallein
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Vienna District Boundaries (Bezirksgrenzen Wien)

The 23 district polygons of Vienna. Not a dataset anyone builds a claim on — the dataset that lets the other Vienna datasets be joined to each other at all.

Shape

features23 district polygons
default CRSEPSG:31256 — MGI / Austria GK East, not WGS84
extent (WGS84)16.1814–16.5783 E, 48.1177–48.3227 N
formatsWFS; GeoJSON and SHP via the catalogue

Why it is here

It is the only entry in this folder that exists to be an input to a mapping rather than a source of a claim. Three of the eleven datasets carry a Vienna geography and none of them agree on how to express it:

datasethow it says where
vienna-baumkatasterBEZIRK — the district, directly
wien-foerderberichtPostleitzahl — a postcode, and the recipient’s registered one
geosphere-klima-v2-1dstation coordinates

Without a boundary layer the third of those cannot be brought onto the same axis as the other two, and the most interesting joinable axis in the whole folder — Vienna × year — is not walkable.

It is an input, not a lookup table

The crosswalk station → district must be a step with a declared rule, never a delivered table. The moment it is a table, the single decision it encodes becomes the only one in the jam nobody can attack: no node, no parameter, no re-run. As a step it is a foton like any other, and the opposing side sets the rule differently and recomputes.

The rule is the parameter, and there is no correct value:

rulewhat it does to a station outside the city, or on a line
containing polygonassigns nothing — Vienna’s weather stations are not all inside Vienna
nearest centroidalways assigns something, sometimes absurdly
within n km of a boundaryassigns a set, and n is yours to choose

Reprojection is a second decision. The boundaries arrive in EPSG:31256; station coordinates are geographic. Something must be transformed to meet the other, and which direction — and which transformation — is a recorded parameter, not a detail.

The postcode crosswalk needs no geometry

Vienna postcodes encode the district: 1 + two digits for the district + 0, so 1010 is the 1st and 1230 the 23rd. PLZ → Bezirk is therefore arithmetic on the middle two digits, and needs a reading (see READINGS.md) rather than this dataset.

[TBC] — the exceptions are not yet verified. Special-purpose postcodes exist (large recipients, and 1300 covers the airport area, which is not in Vienna at all). Any of those in the Förderbericht’s Postleitzahl column will map to a district that does not exist or is not the right one, and that needs checking before the rule is trusted.

And note what the crosswalk inherits: the Förderbericht postcode is the recipient’s registered address, not where the money had its effect (see that dossier, trap 1). Mapping it to a district does not fix that — it makes it look fixed, which is worse.

The licence note

The two sources disagree, and both are official:

  • the city’s OGD terms state CC BY 4.0, attribution Datenquelle: Stadt Wien – data.wien.gv.at;
  • the WFS GetCapabilities document still advertises Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Austria.

Both permit the use B4 requires and both require the same attribution, so nothing is blocked; the service metadata simply lags the portal. Recorded here because a licence checked once and written down is worth more than a licence assumed twice — and because a team that reads the WFS document rather than the portal will cite the older one and be right to.

Also worth knowing: not all Vienna OGD is CC BY. Some datasets are CC BY-NC 4.0, which B4 would not accept for this jam. This one is not among them, but check any further Vienna layer before adding it.

Sensitivity

None. Administrative polygons.